Vietnamese artist backtracks and admits to using foreigners' work for social media project

Months after he took social media by storm with designs and photos that feature life in Saigon that young people can relate to, a local artist has admitted that he does not deserve all the credit.

Nguyen Manh Khoi, who goes by the nickname Maxk Nguyen, is the founder of Saigon Emoji which has won thousands of fans since it went online early this year.

People have fallen in love with the way he narrates city life in a social media context by putting conservation emojis on plastic stools or Facebook likes and hearts on a street vendor’s baskets. They laugh at the (dark) humor of his blending things together such as a salt box labeled drama to add to a realty show, or a blood transfusion bag labeled with a milk tea brand.

The work has been featured on various media outlets in Vietnam, a country where around half of the population has social media accounts.

But questions followed the new-found attention.